Friday, September 12, 2008

Most of us put a lot of effort into this sport. It's just the nature of it. Unfortunately natural talent in cycling doesn't tend to shine until you have your bases covered on fitness.

If you're going to put this much time into being out on the road, you may as well try to do well at it. I see many people doing the same training regime every week without really knowing what they're preparing for. That's fine for some people, but if you want to start having some results or PB's you need to have some concrete goals to shoot for. "Get strong" is not a concrete goal. It needs to be tangible, realistic, have a timeline, and very specific. "Win the club champs in March" is a good example. Make yourself accountable to that goal. With a goal it will help motivate you to get out there every morning and do the best training ride that you can.

Pick an event that suits your abilities about 3 months in advance. There's your goal. Now how are you going to accomplish that goal? You need a path to that goal. Is it going to be accomplished by doing the same old training rides that you've done before and never brought you results? Or maybe it is the right formula?! Pick some races along the way that you rate as low priority that suits as good preparation. Put no expectations on those races but have some small goals within those races that are helping you achieve your end goal. Maybe it's getting in a breakaway, getting a good position in the bunch sprint, riding near the front the whole race, practicing cornering, etc.

I could go on forever about the training needed to bring you to your end goal, but there's lots of good qualified coaches out there that can individualize a training program for you. I'm just here to perhaps make you realize that if you want some success in cycling, you need to start making goals and a pathway to achieving them. The same old training routine that you've always done may not be the right path if it hasn't worked for you before.